CDR Salamander - The Next War Will Come Home

Small and medium-sized wars that populate the periods between larger wars will always give hints to what new weapons, concepts, and technologies will be of importance in the next varsity game.

The Spanish-American War and the Boer Wars at the end of the 19^th and first decade of the 20^th Century along with the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 gave hints to the early years of The Great War.

The Spanish Civil War did the same for World War II.

Wednesday’s return to the U.S. of our service members killed by Iranian attacks on our base in Jordan had me thinking again of the lessons everyone should be taking onboard from the wars in Ukraine since 2022 and those against Iran and her proxies since 2023.

Over the last month, one lesson keeps seeping into my thoughts. The details of that attack, and how it echoes an issue we got our first wake-up call about over six years ago, kept coming up. That little voice in my head kept telling me the lesson is greater than what I was thinking.

To make the voices happy, I figured it was time to write it down.

What is bouncing around my nogg’n is not a tactical lesson about drones, combined arms, or decision cycles. No, something closer to home, literally. The larger issue is that we are reaching the point that the concept of “the rear” is rapidly decreasing.

The Germans learned that by 1943. The Japanese by 1944. Everyone has forgotten it.

During the Cold War, of course, we all knew that—but that was for a nuclear fight in a war expected to last hours to days or maybe a few months depending on how it started.

After the Cold War, we thought—absent a localized terrorist attack here or there—that any fighting would be done “over there” not “here”.

I don’t think we live in that world anymore.

There is not a radical change in technology or operations, just convergent evolution of a few trends accelerated by the demands of war.

1. Normalization of the use of conventional ballistic missiles at scale. Launch on warning is a relic of the past.

2. It is but a booster to make an IRBM or MRBM into an ICBM. That is your high and hypersonic. Additive manufacturing and CNC machines have made everything from FPV to short-range cruise missiles (which is what Lucas-like drones are) easily made, transported, and launched in large numbers with little or no notice as your low and slow threat. All make your backyard in Oklahoma the front line.

3. Secure, low probability of intercept/interference navigation and data communications

4. Miniaturization of sensors and propulsion power.

5. Appreciation of the many/small/scalable over the few/large/exquisite.

The first and second are receiving a high order multiplier effect from advances in the last three.

If we are going to be striking the Chinese mainland in any fight west of the International Date Line, why wouldn’t the Chinese return the favor. In a conventional exchange, it would not be an escalation, it would simply be sound military practice.

As I mentioned on yesterday’s UNCLAS Read Board Podcast, we are just a half-to-full decade away from a significant threat to all we have become used to since the end of the Cold War—the security of our CONUS bases.

Our Fleet Concentration Areas and Master Air Bases? That just simplifies and economizes targeting. Welcome to the renaissance of the concept of strategic homeporting and dispersal.

Masses of ships tightly packed pierside and at one base, with the balance of the national inventory of a given type-model-series parked in perfect lines—open and defenseless?

Our military industrial production for some capabilities at a single site location?

A shallow bench of spares and reserves?

No flex for repair and resupply at peace?

Solutions:

• Disaggregate. Your “fleet concentration area” or “master base” is a national security liability. Accountants love them with equal intensity that forward-looking enemies want you to keep them.

• That floating barrier around your ships? That’s cute.

Make base defense serious, layered, and flexible.

• If it can be put in a hardened shelter, put it there, especially if it has a nuclear reactor or weapon on it. What can an RPG-7-sized shaped-charge warhead do to an engineering compartment…especially a nuclear one? Do you want to see the consequence management plans for this eventuality? Don’t ask.

• If more than 30 percent of any capability we have is located at one place, we lose.

• How scalable are our low rate of production lines?

• What is the real cost of keeping a ship or aircraft for 50 to 60 years as opposed to putting a demand signal into the system by replacing them at 20 or 30 years? What are the second-order effects of this short-sighted decision making starving our industrial base?

• How scalable are our parts and repair facilities?

• How many ways can you move supplies if 30% of your present preferred methods are unavailable at D+1?

It isn’t just our bases west of the international date line we should be concerned about, but those in Louisiana and Missouri; Georgia and Colorado.

If I can wargame this out, I know people with a lot more resources and talent can.

Editor’s Note: No, I will not apologize for the AI-slop poster. I kind of like how in two sentences they can produce ~87.6% of what I wanted.

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